Rascal Flatts "Feels Good" about new CD

08/18/2007 12:42 AM, Reuters


The clock on Rascal Flatts' Web site counts down the days, hours, minutes and even seconds until the September 25 release of the superstar band's fifth studio album, "Still Feels Good." There's no doubt the date is circled on many music industry calendars.

In a business in which album sales are off by double-digit percentages this year, more than a few people will be interested to see how Rascal Flatts will fare with its new Lyric Street release. After all, "Me and My Gang" scored the biggest first-week sales debut of 2006 when it moved 722,000 copies that April. Only four country acts have had bigger first weeks: Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks (twice), Shania Twain and the Dixie Chicks.

The album was the second-best seller of 2006 behind "High School Musical," with 3.5 million copies sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Rascal Flatts is also one of the biggest success stories of the new century.

In addition to radio hits -- the band has seven No. 1s and 17 top 10s on Hot Country Songs, including its current "Take Me There," which is No. 7 this week -- it has performed exceptionally at retail. Its 2000 self-titled debut sold more than 2 million copies, and its last two albums have broken the 4 million plane. As a touring act, the band has played to increasingly larger crowds.

GETTING REAL

But the retail landscape has changed since the band's last release, and no act has had a sales week as big since. That fact is not lost on the band's Jay DeMarcus. "I'm a realist," he says. "I know that at some point there's got to be a ceiling somewhere. I remember thinking while we were all toasting each other for the last record, 'You know, this might be the last time anybody sells this many units out of the box, because of the digital world and the new world that we live in and how the Internet has affected record sales."'

Don't mistake DeMarcus' realism for defeatism. "I don't know if we'll do 722,000 units again in the first week ... but we're going to do everything we can to try and sell as many records as possible."

Lyric Street VP of sales, marketing and media Greg McCarn agrees. "There's a lot of questions as to what the top end is, given the deterioration of the marketplace, but whatever that can be, we'd like to repeat and have the biggest-debuting album of the year."

If "Still Feels Good" doesn't perform as well as past records, it won't be for a lack of focus and effort. The band and producer Dann Huff dedicated a substantial amount of time to the new project.

"We got off the road for three months and just sat and banged it out in the studio," lead singer Gary LeVox says. "With the four previous albums, we'd come in off the road and knock some of it out for two or three days, and then go back on the road. This time we had more time to totally focus."

NEW SOUNDS

There's a well-known adage in Nashville that it all begins with a song. "The quality of songs are the best we've ever had -- lyrically and melodically," LeVox says.

Upon hearing the opening notes of I-want-to-get-to-know-you first single "Take Me There," there's no doubt it's a Rascal Flatts album. But the band offers new sounds as well. "We didn't want to reinvent the wheel, because if something's not broken we didn't feel the need to fix it," DeMarcus says. "But particularly when it comes to songs that the three of us write, we write whatever's in our heart at that moment. We've got a bluegrass tune that we've written for a bonus cut that is definitely different than anything we've done."

"Winner at a Losing Game" conjures '70s country-rock. The trio wrote it late one night on the bus after a show. "We kept it around and kept it around, and we kept playing it for Dann and Dann fell in love with it," DeMarcus says. "We wanted to try this different sort of thing with the production of it, and it ended up being one of our favorite things on the record."

Another departure is actor/singer Jamie Foxx's duet with LeVox on the soulful "She Goes All the Way." "We've never done a duet on one of our albums," LeVox says. "Jamie and I have been friends (for a long time), and so I called him up. He's always been one of my favorite singers -- he got two scoops of talent when they were dishing it out."

The band also recorded five bonus cuts, including the Beatles hit "Revolution," which appeared on the "Evan Almighty" soundtrack. "When Universal Pictures brought it to us, we thought, 'Oh, geez, the Beatles?"' LeVox recalls. "'You mean like the actual Beatles?' But you know, I think we did a good job of marrying us and the original. I actually sang through the same thing that John Lennon sang through -- it's called a Cooper tuner. It's like a hose-in-a-box kind of deal."

Overseeing the process was producer Huff (Faith Hill, Keith Urban), who worked with the trio on "Me and My Gang."

"Dann has been able to take us to another place and to better all three of us individually, not just as musicians, but as singers," the band's Joe Don Rooney says. "He's two things -- completely passionate and overly patient. With those two ingredients in a producer, that's all you need."

Reuters/Billboard